


further assistance required

by chickolascage, thedevilchicken



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Come as Lube, Drowning, Electrocution, Erotic Electrostimulation, Large Cock, M/M, Poisoning, Resurrection, Snuff, Sounding (sort of), Temporary Character Death, Water Sex, wine as lube
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:56:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28703271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chickolascage/pseuds/chickolascage, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: He really hadn't expected company when he made it out of the underworld. And it wasn't every day he was propositioned by his strange - and strangely hot - Olympian relations.(Or: Zagreus meets his end in a variety of different ways, over a variety of different days. The Olympians are so helpful!)
Relationships: Dionysus/Zagreus (Hades Video Game), Poseidon/Zagreus (Hades Video Game), Zagreus/Zeus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 91
Collections: Exchanges After Dark Birthday Bash 2021





	1. Cause of Death: Alcohol Poisoning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StormySocks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormySocks/gifts), [StormyDaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormyDaze/gifts).



The first time, it was an accident. 

"Zag, man, great to see you!" Dionysus called as Zagreus approached. 

He really hadn't expected company given his mother was probably tending pomegranates in the now not-so-forbidden garden back at home in the underworld, but the god of wine and getting totally smashed at parties was lounging half-naked on the grass outside Persephone's cottage. There was a cup of red wine in one of his hands and a big bunch of grapes in the other; Zagreus was fairly sure the house's current supply of both things was pretty lacking, not that such petty concerns seemed to bother his Olympian relations. Knowing Dionysus, he could probably conjure them from thin air, or at least conjure someone to go forage for them.

"Dionysus?" Zagreus replied. "What are you doing here? Not that I'm not pleased to see you, but I didn't know you knew--"

"--about this place?" Dionysus gestured at the picturesque little cottage behind him with his cup-filled hand and spilled wine over his own bare chest in the process. "Oh, sure, I mean, I guess Persephone wanted to keep it a secret? But you know how it goes, man. She told Nyx you keep on dying up here, and Nyx told Athena, and Athena told..." He frowned. "Y'know, Zag, I don't know who Athena told, but I guess I overheard? So here I am! Thought you might like to see a friendly face before you take a trip back downstairs and who's got a friendlier face than me, am I right?" 

There was a certain weird logic to that, Zagreus had to admit, as he watched Dionysus sprawling there lazily on top of his cape on top of the lawn. He really did look quite friendly, until he put the grapes down on the grass, ran his fingertips through the spilled wine on his chest and then licked it off in the most casually obscene manner Zagreus ever seen in his life - not that he supposed he had much experience as concerned the licking off of wine. His brows rose; his eyes got wide; his mouth might have gaped a bit. Dionysus frowned. Suddenly, not very much about the situation seemed friendly.

"Hey, wow, I'm sorry!" Dionysus said. "That's so rude of me, man. You want some?"

When he sat himself up, a few stray drops of stray wine ran down his chest toward the waist of his chiton and Zagreus' gaze followed them. He swallowed. He's fairly sure he blushed and for a second he could see himself kneeling there on the grass and licking the wine off Dionysus' bare skin, all the way from his navel to his sternum. It would have been quite the offer, he thought, if he hadn't torn his eyes off that patch of faintly winey skin above Dionysus' low-slung clothing and found him holding out his cup instead. 

"Oh," he said. "The cup?"

"Well, yeah, sure," Dionysus replied. "Share and share alike, right? I mean, unless you meant..." He glanced down at his navel, swiped two fingertips through the remains of the wine and then ran them over his stuck-out tongue. He arched one eyebrow obviously. "Y'know, something more like that?"

"That's not what I--"

"'Cause that's fine, man. I could be into that."

"I thought--" Zagreus stopped. He made a face that probably looked quite a lot like every time he'd been to work in the administrative chamber: really confused and utterly out of his depth. "Wait, what?"

Dionysus moved. He set his cup down on the grass beside the grapes and then he dipped his first two fingers into it and, entirely on purpose, entirely _with_ purpose, he leaned his head back and tilted it to one side and dripped wine over his right collarbone. It ran down onto his chest and caught at his nipple and Zagreus' heartbeat pounded so suddenly and so strongly in his chest that he thought maybe he was just going to die right then and there. It wouldn't have been the worst way to go, he definitely had enough experience in the area of death to know that, but he had to admit his body's other reaction - sudden, urgent arousal throbbing in between his thighs - made him hope he wasn't already heading for the Styx.

"Are you serious?" he asked. His mouth was dry and his throat felt tight and his voice sounded high and maybe he shouldn't have been so flustered but really, it wasn't every day he was propositioned by his hot Olympian cousin. One of them, at least. The boozy one who liked to show off his thighs.

"Sure, why not?" Dionysus replied. "But is it really so serious, man? It's only sex. I mean, sure, it feels good. It feels _really_ good." He sucked the wine off his fingers and smiled broadly as he lay back again, propped up on his shapely forearms, and wow, _wow_ , Dionysus was already half hard, his cock pushing at his chiton. He watched him reach down and tease the already high hem up higher. He watched him wrap one hand around himself and give a couple of long, languid strokes, just enough so he stiffened up completely. Then he reached over to the cup again, and he dipped his fingers in again; this time, when he brought them out, he dripped wine over the tip of his erection. Zagreus watched it run down its length in little wine-stain rivulets, and he knew exactly what he was going to do.

He went down onto his knees on the ground between Dionysus' rather muscular thighs. He ran his hands up over them, let his fingers trace the slim gold bands he wore around them, moved up, and moved up, even as he started ducking his head down. His own cock was aching inside his leggings, hard and straining against the fabric, as he poked out his tongue and licked the wine from Dionysus' skin. He licked him, base to tip, twice, three times, letting the force of his tongue against him shift his cock toward his belly and then bounce back down as he withdrew; it caught him in the face and he laughed, hot-cheeked, and wrapped one hand around him to try to keep him still. It more or less worked, and he felt Dionysus stiffening up even harder against his palm.

"That feels great, Zag, man," Dionysus said, his voice all pleased and breathy, as Zagreus pushed the head of Dionysus' wine-tasting cock in past his lips and tongued the tip. "Really great. You just keep on doing that, yeah?" 

He was still lying back propped up on one forearm, legs spread wide, and he ran his other hand over Zagreus' hair, ran his fingers through it, ran his fingers _into_ it and eased him down a little. Zagreus found he was fine with that - he took another inch or two or three, his lips tight around him as he knelt there on all fours. Somehow the fact he was still fully dressed while Dionysus was very nearly naked just made it so much better and actually, he didn't even taste bad. Kind of hotly alcoholic, if he had to put his finger on the flavour, but definitely not bad.

He sucked him. He pressed his tongue against him and he sucked him, took him deeper, felt the tip nudge his throat and he spluttered and pulled back, halfway to embarrassed, but Dionysus just smiled that laid-back smile and ran his thumb over Zagreus' lips, damp as they were with spit and wine and possibly-alcoholic pre-come. It made him want to try again, so he did, and Dionysus gave a deep moan of approval as his fingers slid back into his hair. He took him deeper, no spluttering this time. He took him deeper, till the smooth-shaved skin at the base of Dionysus' cock tickled at his nose and he wondered, as Dionysus' breath caught, what it would feel like to fuck himself on it instead of just sucking it. So he pulled back, leaving Dionysus' cock there stiff and glistening in the warm afternoon breeze.

He shuffled up till he was straddling Dionysus' hips and pulled his leggings down, twisting and turning to get them down around his ankles like that didn't make him look like some kind of failed contortionist and not a semi-skilled security consultant. His cock sprang free underneath his tunic and Dionysus laughed as he lay back and pushed the hem up to expose him in the sunlight. When Dionysus wrapped one hand around him, warm and firm and weirdly knowing, Zagreus shivered. Then, as Dionysus stroked him, he reached for the wine. 

"Hey, that's not meant as a substitute for lube, man," Dionysus told him, but it didn't seem like much of a warning with him stroking him the way he did. 

Zagreus shrugged. "Eh, it'll do," he replied, and when he splashed some over Dionysus' cock, Dionysus laughed out loud, apparently really pleased by that, and stroked him harder.

He was right: it wasn't meant as a substitute for lube. But Zagreus was right, too: it actually did work out. He reached back and guided the tip of Dionysus' cock up between his cheeks, right up against his hole. He sat back, his grip firm, clenched his jaw and relaxed his hole quite resolutely, then he pressed and he pressed until the head pushed in, stretching him, making him burn with it and that wasn't just the wine. Dionysus wasn't small guy - maybe he wasn't as toweringly tall as some of the other Olympians, maybe because his mother was mortal - but his cock stretched him wide and made Zagreus groan. It smarted as he pushed down lower, as he pushed it in deeper, but that felt good, too, like Dionysus' hands stroking his cock and gripping one hip and the flush in Dionysus' cheeks that wasn't just from all the wine, either. Some of it was from the wine, though, Zagreus was fairly sure. He'd probably been drinking before he arrived.

He fucked himself on Dionysus' cock. It felt great, he thought - his head felt a little light from it as he rode him, hands on his own bare thighs, head back, back arched. His head started to spin and maybe that was his impending death and maybe it was the smell of the wine or the giddy way that Dionysus smiled up at him as he stroked his cock again and again. The world started to tilt and he swayed as he moved, he sagged forward with both palms pressed flat to Dionysus' chest and gasped and moaned and ground down against him, his hole stretched tight and his cock starting to leak with a profusion of which he'd not been sure that it was capable. And when Dionysus came inside him, no attempt to prolong it, no holding back, that was it: he came, too, with a splatter of come over Dionysus' abdomen as he closed his eyes and gasped and wobbled. 

"I think it might be time," Zagreus said. "The Styx will probably take me soon." And Dionysus laughed as he helped him down onto his back. He stretched him out beside him on his cloak and nuzzled his cheek with his nose.

"I think that's maybe my fault, not the creepy river," he said. "There's been some wild parties lately, man. What can I say?" But Zagreus slipped away before he could question that too deeply and the next thing he knew, he was back again, dragging himself out of the damned pool in his father's house. 

Hypnos eyed him. " _Alcohol poisoning_?" he said, and Zagreus bit his lip to keep from laughing - he supposed that explained what had happened with surprising concision. It turned out the wine had been the least of his concerns.

"I guess I overindulged on my trip to the surface?" he replied, then he zipped off toward his room before Hypnos could ask too many awkward questions - ones he really didn't feel like answering. Not when the answer was that Dionysus' bodily fluids were probably a fire risk there was so much concentrated booze in them.

It was an accident, yes, but he couldn't say that he regretted it. Not when there were so many worse ways to go.

He just wondered what next time might bring.


	2. Cause of Death: Electrocution

The second time, it absolutely wasn't an accident. But that wasn't to say it was something he expected. 

What he expected was a colourful frog to poison him or maybe he'd eat the wrong sort of mushroom out of an urgent sense of curiosity or maybe an elephant would trample him while he was really just minding his own business - Hypnos' list of the unique deaths of Zagreus, son of Hades, was getting almost disturbingly long. 

What he expected was death of a miscellaneous nature. What he _hoped for_ was that he'd find his purple-haired, wine-soaked cousin lounging on the lawn outside the house again, in clothes that wouldn't be stained from the grass or the booze or anything sex-related because Olympus probably had an excellent laundry service, or else Dionysus went through chitons like his father went through capes. That seemed possible, all things considered.

What he actually got was...well, neither thing. The lord of Olympus was sitting on the edge of the well by the banks of the Styx, juggling lightning bolts like clubs while he waited. For him, Zagreus supposed. 

"Lord uncle Zeus?" he said, as he approached. 

"Nephew!" Zeus stood and turned to him with a smile almost as bright as his party trick. The bolts of lightning fizzled back into the air whence they'd come but they seemed to leave a charge behind, making the hairs stand up down the back of Zagreus' neck, and Zeus strode forward to clap him heartily on both shoulders. "I must say, my niece has a lovely little cottage here. A bit too small for me, ha ha, but if we could just find a way to rid you of that pesky chthonic curse of yours, perhaps this place could be a kind of refuge for you from your father's house. It's far too dark down there for my liking, Zagreus, and such a long way from Olympus. Don't you find it dark?"

Zagreus frowned. "I suppose I've never really thought about it," he replied, peering up at him. He remembered his uncle Zeus from the party, of course, but outdoors he seemed even larger - he was as tall as his father, at least, with a beard as white and fluffy as the clouds in the sky and the odd thought popped into Zagreus' head that maybe it turned stormy grey like the sky did when he got angry. Probably not, but who knew where Olympus was concerned? "But uncle, this house..."

Zeus squeezed his shoulders in his huge hands until they seemed to creak. "Oh, don't worry, nephew," he said. "None of the others know your mother's little secret - they all think it's just the pretty place you fade into the Styx once you've done trouncing your father. Except Hermes, of course, but that's _our_ little secret, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is, yes." His frown deepened as he continued looking up at Zeus' smiling face and felt the crackle of static down his arms, making his fingers twitch and tingle. "Uncle, please don't take this the wrong way, but...erm." He scrunched his face up awkwardly. "What exactly are you doing here?"

Zeus laughed. It was a great booming sound, like Zagreus imagined thunder might be, though he supposed he'd never actually heard it. His eyes flashed white-gold and Zagreus shivered as his pulse abruptly quickened. He wasn't scared of his father, no, but he still wasn't sure if he should fear his uncle Zeus or not.

"I spoke with my son," Zeus said, and when Zagreus' face didn't resolve into anything resembling understanding he clucked his tongue at himself and said, "Yes, yes, of course, which one!" He leaned in to bring his mouth down by Zagreus' ear, which wasn't a particularly inconsiderable distance given his lofty height. "I spoke with Dionysus," he said, his voice lower if still not exactly private, though that hardly mattered when there was no one around them to overhear. And when he pulled himself back up straight and tall and really rather imposing, Zagreus could still feel the electric prickle of his breath against his skin.

His pulse quickened even further. His chest felt tight, and not only from the charge that lingered in the air. "Can I ask what you mean by that?" he said. 

"Oh, just that he told me you die here every time you escape," Zeus replied. "That's ghastly, Zagreus, really. And he told me about the little - well, _accident_ , I suppose you'd call it - that the two of you had together last time you were here. We talked it over and it seems to me we could do so much more to help than just granting boons along the way. We've been missing an entire portion of your journey! Don't you agree?"

Zagreus' cheeks burned as realisation dawned. He bit his lip. He jabbed his nails into his palms, but that couldn't distract from the dance of electricity over his skin. Dionysus had told him. Dionysus had _told him_. And there he was, king of the gods in the Olympian flesh, offering his help. 

"Uh, lord uncle Zeus?" he said. "Just to be sure I understand..."

Zeus beamed. "Oh, Zagreus!" he said. "Your repeated demise surely doesn't have to be so grim and grisly as all that? Your family is here to help in any way we can." Then he stepped back and gestured at him with both big hands. "Now, why don't you get undressed and we'll begin?"

It was, if anything, even stranger a proposition than his previous encounter: his all-powerful uncle, king of the gods, regal, commanding, larger than life, was standing in front of him and suggesting quite straightforwardly that he strip and let him make his next death a pleasant one, though what exactly he meant to do was a bit of a mystery and asking just seemed sort of rude. And really, he didn't want to seem ungrateful, not when the lord of Olympus seemed so...amenable. So he did exactly as he'd been asked: he undressed.

Standing naked on the lawn outside his mother's cottage seemed a bit strange, yes. He still wasn't totally sure why he wasn't leaving burning footprints all over it but there were some things in life he knew better than to question and anyway, by that point he'd just done a bumbling and exceptionally nerve-racking striptease in front of his father's brother. Zeus, for his part, didn't seem to find anything strange about the situation; he leaned against the side of the well, his personage huge enough that Zagreus half expected it to groan and give way at any moment and maybe the unplanned adjustment to the landscaping would have given him a brief reprieve. The well didn't collapse under his uncle's immensity, however, and Zeus stood there, stroking his beard as he watched him add each newly-stripped item of clothing to the growing pile on the grass beside him. 

Standing naked on the lawn outside his mother's cottage was strange, yes, but not the strangest thing he'd ever experienced. The sun on his skin felt kind of nice, actually, and it wasn't like he could wear shoes at the best of times with how they tended to burn to a crisp within the first half hour no matter what they'd been made from, and he'd never been particularly prudish - there was nothing like having a gaping open doorway into your bedroom to get over your petty concerns about the shades seeing you naked. The difference was that the air still felt sort of tingly and thrummed against his skin and wandered like the lightest of pinpricks over the length of his bare cock. He tucked his hands behind his back to keep from covering himself up in a manner most unbecoming and felt two things happen simultaneously, though he couldn't say he'd thought he had enough blood in him for both: his cheeks blushed as red as the Pool of Styx and his cock got as hard as Stygius. Not that he expected to do quite as much damage with his awkwardly aroused appendage as the blade of the underworld, but the comparison (much like his cock) still stood. 

"My, you _are_ eager!" Zeus said. He sounded delighted by that fact, and he pushed himself away from the well to come a little closer. He untied the belt around his waist as he moved and dropped it to the ground by Zagreus' clothes. He pushed the chiton from his shoulder and let it drop away, too. He was, of course, completely naked underneath; not exactly insignificant parts of him were covered up by his not insignificant beard, but it swayed as he stepped forward and Zagerus got the gist of what was underneath. Then Zeus paused, frowned, stroked his beard in thought, and gestured at the ground. 

"You should lie down, nephew," he said. "I wouldn't want you to fall and hurt yourself." 

Zagreus knelt, then he sat down, then he stretched out on his back, stoically _not_ asking what Zeus meant to do that might make him collapse in a heap on the strangely still neatly manicured lawn, or why it mattered when he was just going to pop his clogs rather imminently anyway. Zeus came closer. He nudged at one of Zagreus' calves with one still-sandalled foot and Zagreus spread his legs; Zeus knelt between them, close to him, knees wide, and draped Zagreus' thighs over his own. Zeus cursed under his breath - Zagreus wondered if all the chickens of small village somewhere in the Aegean might be laying hydra eggs for a week or something as a result of it - then dug the end of his long beard out from under his shin where he'd sat on it. He chuckled wryly, like it wasn't the first time that had happened, then he threw the whole thing over his shoulder like a scarf.

"Relax, Zagreus," Zeus said, as he raised his hands. Honestly, Zagreus thought, the fact that lightning began to crackle between his fingers, dancing over his gold rings and curling down around his thick forearms, really didn't inspire relaxation, but his cock didn't seem to mind; it lay there throbbing against his stomach, leaking embarrassingly like he'd never had sex with a superpowered Olympian before. Of course, before his previous escape attempt and his encounter with his cousin, he really hadn't. 

Zeus trailed his crackling fingertips over Zagreus' calves. He felt the muscles there spasm lightly, jumping, twitching, making his heart race in his chest and his hands clench into fists at his sides on the grass. Zeus trailed them higher, over his thighs, his hips, up to his waist; Zagreus gasped, and he shivered, and Zeus just looked so genuinely pleased as he licked one thumb and then rubbed it around one of Zagreus' nipples; he gasped again, louder, arching up off the grass as electricity pricked at his skin and made his nipple harden almost painfully. Zeus pinched it between his thumb and forefinger, sharply, almost _too_ sharply, but the brief flash of pain just made Zagreus' cock twitch and his balls tighten. That fact did not escape his uncle's notice. He actually seemed even happier about that. 

"Dionysus told me you enjoy a particular kind of relationship with the Fury Megaera," Zeus said, as casually as hello-goodbye-how are you, as he held one forefinger just a fraction of an inch from Zagreus' nipple. Lightning sparked from it, finding Zagreus' skin, making his throat feel tight and his face feel hot and his insides flutter with a kind of nervous excitement. "I can't tell you how pleased I am to find he was well informed!"

He spread his fingers wide and he ran them down, slowly, ten trails of lightning striking Zagreus repeatedly all the way down to his hips till he was pushing his thighs down hard against Zeus', his arse rising off the grass as a result and his cock straining hard. Zeus leaned down and tucked one hand underneath him, supporting him there at the small of his back as his sparking fingers stroked his cleft. Zeus' fingertips pressed between his cheeks, pressed up drily against his hole, the electricity of them making his rim twitch tight again and again as his eyes drifted shut, but that wasn't for long - Zeus' free hand suddenly covered his cock in its entirety, all tingling, prickling, scintillating, so sudden and intense and entirely overwhelming that Zagreus couldn't help it: he yelped and he came abruptly against Zeus' palm. 

"Oh!" Zagreus said, wincing and breathless. "I...honestly, uncle, I do usually last much longer than that." 

Zeus laughed. "Zagreus, dear boy, if you had lasted much longer I would have taken it as a personal insult," he replied. "And frankly, if you think that means we've finished..." 

Zeus turned his come-covered hand and as Zagreus pushed himself up onto his forearms, he saw him wrap that hand around his own cock and stroke until he was slicked with it. Then he pulled Zagreus closer, roughly, his big hands at his hips, till his arse was suspended in the air between Zeus' thighs. He rubbed his lightning-enwreathed fingers between his cheeks, made his back arch with it, made his head drop back, made his breath catch, and Zeus was _huge_ , a tower of a man with a towering penis slicked with Zagreus' own come that he nudged down and pressed against his rim. 

"Is that going to fit?" Zagreus asked, and Zeus chuckled at him in response. 

"With some difficulty, I expect," he replied. "But my Ganymede is more or less your size, you know, and he seems to enjoy it."

That was not, in fact, particularly reassuring, and he knew it was going to hurt. That ridiculously oversized cock really wasn't meant to fit inside someone Zagreus' size, but he supposed it must have happened at some point, given Ganymede and then all the demigod heroes residing in Elysium and besides which, it wasn't as if he didn't believe he'd like it. If there was one thing his relationship with Meg had taught him, it was that pain didn't necessarily have to be a _bad_ thing, and when he felt Zeus cant his hips, when he felt him pressing forward, he let himself relax as best he could to take him. He was _enormous_ , frankly - the largest that he'd ever had by quite some margin, long and thick and once the head of it was in him, stretching him taut just past the deep ridge at the base of the glans, the lightning started. It pulsed in him, lighting him up, bolts of it firing through him as Zeus began to push in deeper, opening him up wider than he'd ever been. It seemed impossible, and he could feel himself spasm around it, his back arching hard, pushing himself down onto it until his uncle was balls deep inside him and Zagreus couldn't have caught his breath if his life had depended on it. 

His life, as it happened, did not depend on it. He did manage to breathe, albeit shallowly, basically panting as Zeus' big hands framed his waist and moved _him_ instead of moving himself, kneeling there on the grass and fucking Zagreus on his cock. Zagreus felt limp, overwrought, his muscles twitching from the electricity, eyelids flickering, hands clenching on thin air as his cock stiffened up again. He could barely make himself move at all - he felt his toes curl over and over with the electric in him, his breath just thin little gasps, and when he managed to flop one arm up onto his chest and run it down, his stomach felt tight, stretched with the girth of his uncle's gigantic cock. He pressed down and it made him wince and made his hole pull tighter and Zeus groaned so he did it again. And again. And _again_.

When Zeus came, it was like a shower of sparks inside him. Zeus pulled him down firmly onto the length of his cock and held him there as it pulsed through his orgasm and Zagreus really couldn't help it: those sparks tickled in his balls and shivered down the length of his spine and burst through his cock and he came, too, gasping, his legs wrapped tight around his uncle's waist. He came so hard that it splashed his chest almost up under his chin and he trembled with it afterwards while Zeus held him there by his waist, stroking his taut stomach with his big thumbs. 

"You know, nephew," Zeus said, almost offhand, as he held him there still seated on his slowly softening cock. "In some ways you're so very much like a mortal. Not as fragile, perhaps; I always have to be so _careful_ with them. But how you react..." He stroked the underside of Zagreus' spent cock with one fingertip, the lightning surging through it until one last strained, pained spurt issued forth. He had to admit it felt wonderful, bright and hot and sharp, even if he couldn't keep himself from yelping. "Now, stay still..."

He was still basically impaled on his uncle's rather immense godhood when Zeus reached up and spread one hand over his chest. There was a flash of pain, lightning coursing through him, thrilling him, _killing_ him, and then he woke up in the pool again. Somehow his clothes were back in place, though the wraps around his forearms didn't quite sit the way they should and the ache in his backside said he definitely hadn't dreamt it. 

"Electrocution?" Hypnos said, once he'd dragged himself out and wandered by. 

"Would you believe there was a thunderstorm?" Zagreus replied. "Stygius would probably make a wonderful lightning rod." 

But he didn't give Hypnos a chance to respond; he zipped off back into his room as fast as his rather jellied legs would carry him. When he came again roughly twenty minutes later, three fingers shoved knuckle-deep into his arse and one fist tight around his cock, it ached so beautifully he almost passed out. 

And he couldn't help but wonder who else he might meet out there. If that wasn't an incentive to escape again, he wasn't sure what was.


	3. Cause of Death: Drowning

As he made his way to the cottage following his next successful escape, Hades grumpily defeated and the underworld fading away behind him, Zagreus' heart was already beating faster. He felt oddly nervous, though he supposed he had no real reason for it; after all, the outcome of his ever more frequent excursions to the surface was always the same: grim death of some kind, followed by saying hi to Hypnos. That or sneaking past him in a manner about as stealthy as Cerberus on the trail of satyr sacks while his ever-vigilant chthonic comrade caught up on his unnaturally deep beauty sleep. 

So, he'd spent a couple of days in his father's house after the last time, eager to make another exit but not wanting to seem _too_ eager about it - he'd have said he had a reputation to upkeep, but actually he knew his reputation was mostly for being so terrible at paperwork that even nepotism couldn't save him. 

He'd loitered, placing orders with the contractor, petting Cerberus and strategically dodging Hypnos' attempts to query his latest in a long line of slightly less-than-usual demises. He'd sparred with Achilles and played his lyre with Orpheus in a way he actually didn't feel was too terribly embarrassing, though Meg made faces at him from the lounge door as she coiled and uncoiled and recoiled her whip - promises, promises. He'd helped his mother with the pomegranates in the garden, and definitely hadn't talked about what he'd been doing in her _other_ garden, until it had felt like just enough time had passed. Not that time meant much of anything in the underworld and he supposed that must be the same on Olympus, just with more clouds and sunshine and a near-limitless supply of nectar, in which Dionysus probably bathed on a daily basis. Then, he'd slipped back out into the labyrinths of Tartarus and started his next attempt.

He was nervous as he left the snow behind and entered the garden, though he really didn't expect to find anyone there. At least he told himself he didn't - a couple of decidedly strange encounters with his drunk cousin and his eccentric uncle didn't mean the whole family was plotting new endeavours in Olympian euthansia and even if they did, it wasn't as if they were total strangers. His mother's white lie of a party had actually gone down like a house on fire, though fortunately the only literal fire involved had been the chef grilling fish - they always rather suspiciously survived Zagreus' regular subterranean pummellings without arriving in the lounge looking too much like gupp carpaccio, though he still wasn't sure how that happened. His uncle Poseidon hadn't seemed terribly impressed with the underworld seafood platter that evening, though, and Zagreus hadn't had the heart to enquire whether that was because the bass they were eating was a distant relation or if he just objected to the fact the chef had a tendency to cook everything to the same indelicate shade of charcoal. 

He was just considering whether half the fish in the sea were actually his uncle's illegitimate offspring and how exactly a god the size and general dimensions of Poseidon went about copulating with the average cod when actually, he realised the garden wasn't empty after all. In fact, there was the sea god himself in all his green-haired glory, sitting on the riverbank with his legs dangling down into the water. He seemed to be making himself at home.

"Well hello there, little Hades!" he called when he spotted him, and he hauled himself up to his feet. A quick wave of his hands and all the water clinging to his bare legs gathered itself into the air and deposited itself back into the river with a faint little splash. He used his particularly pointy trident a bit like a walking stick as they came closer to each other, then he snapped his fingers and the whole thing disappeared into thin air with a disconcerting splish like a fishtail on the surface of a river. 

Perhaps he shouldn't have been quite so surprised but Zagreus came to a stop as the trident vanished into the ether and Poseidon took advantage of his brief astonishment to sweep him up off his feet into a bone-creaking hug. He felt oddly damp, even after his godly water-wringing trick, a fact that Zagreus actually remembered from the party - he'd had a wet handprint lingering on his tunic for half an hour, until he'd taken his cousin Ares for a quick tour of Asphodel. The boiling lakes of lava inhabited by his favourite hissing hydra had solved the damp clothing issue with relative expedience.

"I wasn't expecting to see you here, uncle," Zagreus replied, once he'd found himself set back down on his feet again. He peered up at him; Poseidon might not have been quite as tall as his father or Zeus, but he wasn't small by any means. He fairly towered over him, all long green beard and long green hair and a surprisingly friendly demeanour considering how many of the shades in the underworld had met their end at the bottom of the sea. "By any chance have you been talking to Dionysus?"

"Oh, no, he and I rarely speak outside the usual family get-togethers," Poseidon replied, and he waved one pearl-bedecked hand to dismiss the idea. "My brother Zeus came to see me, can you imagine that? We barely get along at the best of times, he and I, and here you are bringing us together!" He patted Zagreus wetly on his bare shoulder. Droplets of water rolled down his back. "You're quite the miracle, little Hades. Who would have thought." 

"Uh..." 

Zagreus scratched at the back of his neck. It was a lovely thought, that he was helping to bring his squabbling relatives together on a more longstanding basis, but he had to admit there was something slightly more pressing on his mind: what exactly had Zeus told Poseidon that had led to him making this unannounced appearance in his niece's garden? Perhaps he did also wonder how he'd got there - had he swum? did he have some sort of pearly chariot drawn by a team of burly seahorses? had he left a trail of wet footprints all the way there from Mount Olympus? - but now really wasn't the time for figuring out how gods without a convenient pair of winged sandals made their way around the world. 

He made a face. It probably wasn't a very attractive face. It probably resembled the first (or the second, or indeed the third) time he'd encountered Theseus in his abomination of a Macedonian Tau-Lambda, or the wariness with which he tended to approach Cerberus' favourite snacks. 

"Um. Uncle Poseidon," he said. "What exactly did he tell you?" 

"Why, everything, I suppose!" Poseidon replied. "Honestly, nephew, I'm disappointed that you didn't ask for our help with your little expiration issue long ago. Did you think we'd let you down?" 

He shook his head mock-sadly, his long hair dripping water over the grass as he did so, which Zagreus supposed wasn't entirely unexpected. Then he did something that definitely _was_ unexpected: he raised both hands up in the air and with a snap of his fingers he entirely transformed. One second he was standing there an Olympian of towering but ultimately fleshy proportions, and the next he was...well, he was a bit more transparent than that. The outline of him was the same but he was suddenly as beautifully crystal clear as the Styx before it took its turn toward the underworld and Zagreus could see the wobbly outline of the cottage straight through him, distorted by the ripple of water roughly where his spleen should have been. 

"I bet you've never seen that before!" Poseidon said. He was still recognisably himself in size and shape, though his voice seemed to gargle like a whirlpool, and he stretched out his arms and took a turn to show off his oddly coherent liquid form. Then he took a step closer, close enough that Zagreus could feel the chill of him, like what he was currently composed of had recently melted from a passing glacier. Given his grandmother's influence on the world of late, he supposed glacier's weren't actually too far off. "Now, what do you say: do you prefer to leave your clothes on or to take them off?"

"I..." 

Zagreus stopped speaking almost as soon as he'd started, suddenly acutely aware that he had no idea how to answer that question when he had no idea what might happen if he did keep his clothes on. He supposed he very nearly had with Dionysus, then he'd taken them off with Zeus, but neither of them had been a towering column of water that almost blinded him every time the sun peeked out from behind the clouds and bounced off its shiny surface. It was one of the stranger things he'd seen in a while, but intriguing with it, and he reached out to touch Poseidon's watery chest with his fingertips; there was a tension to the surface sort of like a wet balloon but when he applied a little pressure, he found himself suddenly and disconcertingly wrist-deep inside his uncle's chest. 

"Oh!" he said. "I'm sorry, I--" But Poseidon wrapped one hand around Zagreus' wrist and held him there before he could try to pull away. It felt sort of like he imagined it would to plunge his hand into a bucket of ice, not that the House of Hades usually saw a lot of that. It tended to melt somewhere around the third chamber full of lava. 

"That tickles, you know," Poseidon said, and Zagreus' gaze went down to his wrist where Poseidon's hand was starting to... _spread_. His fingers flattened as the chilly water crept its way up his arm. "So, clothes on, it seems!" 

In a sudden rush, Poseidon seemed to flow straight onto him, and over him, sweeping over arms and legs and torso, down his back, until he was enveloped almost entirely. He floated there, suspended inside him, only his face still exposed to the air. And _then_ he understood exactly what he'd meant about keeping his clothes on.

Zagreus was drenched. His skin and his hair and his clothes were all soaked through and the fact that he was still fully dressed didn't seem to mean very much at all; he felt the water that he supposed was technically his uncle flowing underneath them, _through_ them, over his chest and his stomach and down between his thighs. It flowed over his balls, icy cold, and made him shiver as it cradled them up against his body. He started to stiffen in spite of the chill, inside his leggings, suspended there weightlessly inside his uncle's strangely liquid form. And when Poseidon laughed, he heard it through the water. 

"It seems my brother was right, for once!" Poseidon said, his voice oddly clear - Zagreus supposed the fact the water was surrounding him and pressing up against his ears accounted for that odd sensation. "You do seem very eager, little Hades. Why didn't we do this eons ago?" Then a cold rush of water surged down through the fabric of Zagreus' leggings and wrapped wet and snug around his cock. The ripples moving through it almost felt like stroking and when he groaned, his own voice sounded further away than Poseidon's did. 

The ripples spread. They started at his already somewhat aching cock and moved down, over his balls, over his perineum, back toward the cleft of his arse, pressing there with a rhythm only as discernible as the waves of the sea. Zagreus' heart beat faster in his chest and he could barely hear his own breath - all there was was the rush of blood in his ears and Poseidon's swirling, satisfied hum that seemed like it was _everywhere_ , in his head and thrumming through his body. The ripples weren't like hands anymore, if they ever had been. They were almost like the sea itself, he thought, though he supposed he'd never actually seen the sea from terribly close by, only a number of rivers that were out of his uncle's domain once they dipped under the surface. 

The ripples strengthened and the water held him in suspension, so completely lacking leverage that he couldn't push against them. And as they pulsed there, making his eyes close, making his lips part and his heart race, something else happened: an odd sort of flexible tendril of water stroked between his cheeks. It rubbed at his rim, lapped at it like a cold little tongue and then pressed there, chilly but not unpleasant, making him tighten before he persuaded himself to relax. For a moment, it thinned to the point where it was a remarkably straightforward thing to push inside him, and then it swelled, quickly, catching him off guard. It lengthened and widened, stretching him from the inside, and he yelped, as much in surprise as anything else. That made sense, really: he'd just rather abruptly found his arse as full up as it had ever been, so full that it made his hole seize and his cock jerk, and he was _still_ fully clothed. 

The thing in him - his uncle's cock, he supposed, though it was rather difficult to tell exactly which body part it might have been when he looked like something you might drink after a strenuous jog through Tartarus - started to move. It wasn't like any sex he'd had before though; it rippled, like the water over the rest of his drenched genitalia, long waves down its length, over and over, and Zagreus tried to clench his fists to keep from making a rather undignified noise except the water around them held him still. The water spread his legs wider, and the ripples spread too, over his thighs, his calves, both arms, till they were _everywhere_. It felt like he couldn't breathe - he was freezing cold and could barely move and every last part of him except his strangely exposed face was being pressed at in a disconcertingly arrhythmic fashion not unlike his first attempts at the lyre until he couldn't tell where one wave stopped and the next began. 

The water teased at the tip of his cock, too - he felt it there, another odd little tendril, finding the slit and then flowing deep inside in a sudden flood. He could feel it pulsing there, too, inside his arse and inside his cock, as his hips shifted of their own accord against the water's grip around him. He felt it thicken, and he yelped again, but the momentary pain drifted quickly into chilly pleasure. Water flowed higher then, too, over his mouth, _into_ it, that same tension to the surface of it that he'd felt before so it was less of a gush and more of an intrusion, welcome as it was. It pushed into his mouth, over his teeth that ached at the chill, stroking his tongue, moving back until it teased his throat. There was a moment of panic as he gagged, as he thought he might choke, but Poseidon's pleased hum was still there in his ears - that made it hard to feel too concerned, quite honestly, even if he suspected that he knew what might come next. 

The ripples strengthened. Zagreus could feel them everywhere, in him and on him, making his cock ache and his hole ache and his throat feel tight. The ripples strengthened and it was irresistible: his breath caught and then he couldn't breathe at all because the water flowed over his face, over his nose and his eyes until he was covered completely and he could see through it when his eyelids opened, through the liquid blur to the banks of the Styx as his uncle fucked him. He would have cried out but the sound was more like a gurgle in his throat and he couldn't breathe, he _couldn't breathe_ , like the coils of Meg's whip were around his neck or maybe Than's hands except both of them would have stopped. Poseidon didn't stop, which Zagreus knew was sort of the point of the exercise. He held him there and he pulsed around him and he _wouldn't stop_ , and Zagreus' vision swam, not just from the water. It dimmed at the edges but seemed to brighten in the centre and the pulsing went on, until he came with a bone-deep spasm around the thick liquid cock inside him. 

"You _drowned_ this time?" Hypnos said. He looked almost legitimately concerned, and Zagreus really wasn't sure that explaining exactly how he'd come to drown somewhere up on the surface instead of being socked by shades would change Hypnos' expression for the better. 

"Well, it beats having my arse kicked by Theseus at the very least," he replied. Then he zipped away into his room. 

And really, all he could think as he lay in bed once he'd finally undressed was that he had the single strangest family he could ever have conceived of. That, and how in the midst of his post-orgasmic demise, he'd felt oddly fond.

That probably meant he really was one of them after all.


End file.
